Advice on changing the hardwiring of a mind?

D

dnaj65000

I'm a believer that "you have to change the roots before you can change the fruits" or "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing but expecting different results."

My question is have you found any techniques that worked for you to break your bad habits and was able to form lasting new ones?

My trading problem is that I am greedy when it comes to my individual trades. I try to let my profits run, but most of the time, winners turn into losers and I get stopped out either at break even or several hundred $ below at my original stop. I day trade currencies with trades not lasting longer than 7hrs. Being stopped at break even or the orginial stop makes my account slowly drawdown.

My problem lies not at recognizing when to take a small profit, but actually doing it. When the trend reverses, I do not get out for a small gain, instead electing to hope for it to continue in my favor or letting it hit my stop. I know not every move will be a big move, in fact most moves are choppy and small profits during that time would help my P/L, however, how does one change the hardwiring of the brain to say it is good to hit singles more often than to hit one out of the park?
 
If you remove a bad habit, that space will fill itself with another bad habit unless you fill it immediately with a good habit. The space will not wait.

If hope is part of your trading plan, you will fail. Your system must be both simple and hardened against emotions, so that you know when you will exit a trade, stop loss or profit target, even before you enter the trade.

I hold no stock (no pun intended) in systems in which judgement is a factor after the trade has been entered.
 
This problem is soooo, soooo, soooo easy to fix. Become a profit taking fool! What happens after you take your profit is irrelevent. Case in point, this last trade. Short 71.50, cover 68.25, market tanks shortly thereafter. I simply do not care. I took 3.25 points. That's the ONLY thing that matters.
 

Attachments

this is the problem I'm referring to in the above post. If your trades are showing you instant, or nearly instant profit where is your edge? It's as clear as day to me. You're probably like me. You can probably see only a short distance into the future.

Quote from dnaj65000:


My trading problem is that I am greedy when it comes to my individual trades. I try to let my profits run, but most of the time, winners turn into losers and I get stopped out either at break even or several hundred $ below at my original stop. I day trade currencies with trades not lasting longer than 7hrs. Being stopped at break even or the orginial stop makes my account slowly drawdown.
More...
 
Quote from ProfitTakgFool:

This problem is soooo, soooo, soooo easy to fix. Become a profit taking fool! What happens after you take your profit is irrelevent. Case in point, this last trade. Short 71.50, cover 68.25, market tanks shortly thereafter. I simply do not care. I took 3.25 points. That's the ONLY thing that matters.
More...

Thanks for this.
 
One thing that's been a truth for me is simply that your methodology dictates your psychology.

No one will ever know (100% of the time) how a trade is going to turn out prior to entering, but if you did, how would you feel? Empowered or depressed?

If you understand what the market is doing/trying to do it puts you in a more empowered state of mind. It's like barry bonds facing a little league pitcher, he knows that if the kid can get a pitch over the plate he's gonna drive the hell out of it, but if pitches aren't remotely close to the strike zone he won't swing. The same pitcher could be striking out kids, etc his own age (or those that haven't put in the time, etc like barry has).
 
I've been working on psychological problems for decades. I've found that some research into brain nutrition was a huge help. I'm taking Omega3 in large quantities, COQ10 [if you past 35-40 yo], phosphatidylserine, GABA brings a little tranquility for some of us, probably not all, and a few other ones. If you are a vegan you have to supplement even more stuff.

For the most part nobody will follow the following advice for several reasons 1) it's a lot of work 2) you have to dig into your own little garbage can of psych problems and when you lift the lid and see all the beady little eyes staring at you you will want to run far and fast: find a deliverance ministry and pray to find out what lies the devil has you believing. A friend of mine has such a ministry and over a few decades he discovered that there might be about 250 different lies that are the devil's stock in trade. Once you root out the biggest ones you are on your way to becoming way more happy and rational than you thought possible... now if you're an atheist I feel that you will eventually resign yourself to the problem that you can't find a permanent fix for anything but hey...
 
Quote from dnaj65000:

I'm a believer that "you have to change the roots before you can change the fruits" or "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing but expecting different results."

My question is have you found any techniques that worked for you to break your bad habits and was able to form lasting new ones?

My trading problem is that I am greedy when it comes to my individual trades. I try to let my profits run, but most of the time, winners turn into losers and I get stopped out either at break even or several hundred $ below at my original stop. I day trade currencies with trades not lasting longer than 7hrs. Being stopped at break even or the orginial stop makes my account slowly drawdown.

My problem lies not at recognizing when to take a small profit, but actually doing it. When the trend reverses, I do not get out for a small gain, instead electing to hope for it to continue in my favor or letting it hit my stop. I know not every move will be a big move, in fact most moves are choppy and small profits during that time would help my P/L, however, how does one change the hardwiring of the brain to say it is good to hit singles more often than to hit one out of the park?
More...

Great inquiry.

german Trader suggests that brain space switches are hard to do. Fortunately, you have the knowledge and skills you need already. as noted in the illustration below under the two encoded colored box.

Doing the erase with LTD is more difficult than adding new connections with LTP. Erasing is almost impossible unless it is on the level of erasing a divorced person once you have a new partner coming into view. This is only trading.

Fractals 'R Us gave you the food and vitamin and external biochemical fix. But he passed on the quicky externality that you really need to get a fix on.

Read Start and Stark and eliminate your O --2 starvation when you are freezing up as you tell us you do.

You can't repair your situation with your current belief system so it has to be done externally. For some reason you think that you can erase your problem by working in your mind to change things around.

I would never make the following suggestion to anyone following the CW of Boyd as remediated by Steenbarger's application of Boyd.

It is not possible to change a preson's viewpoint in CW after it has reached a certain point. Refer to the recent two poot camps. the players could not do any shifting from their knwoledge and skills as imposed upon themselves by their beliefs.

What you can simply do is start to implement the red repair box on the diagram.

attachment.php


The before is as follows:

You know the solution and you can't implement it.

The during is as follows:

You need to know when the syndrome (freezing up which is way beyond fight or flight) is coming up. When you are made aware of this, then you enable your self to remediate.

As you see you can use KNOWLEDGE to KILL the HOPE belief.

And you use knowledge to ACT to operate on your trading platform.

This is done by setting up an external UBS between you and the software you need to add to your computer. The display is color coded for the two parts of the repair box. The red signal is the lizard and the remediation symbol is Green. It involved three scales red, blue and green and you simply use the red as the leading signal where you know you NEED to trade and you change your freeze up by making the display go to green.

The after is as follows.

You keep using whatever you do to trade that you already have in your mind as being proper but now undoable.

Your 0 --2 level in your brain is now being doubled (from 50% to 100%) and the causal factor for your freezing is no longer there.

You iteratively refine your mind to know better and better when to keep in trades so you are making even more than to small profts that accumulate by "the signal you are now getting that the knowledge of the trend being over."


Final Note: Most of trading failure comes from learning failure. But as in your case, you do know what is the right thing to do (you mind is differentiated.

The general causal foul up by learning repeated failure is that the mind finally freezes up and has no alternatives with any utility.

If you want to hook up and get the "fix" it let me know.
 

Attachments

Do exactly what other people like Hershey tell you to do.

Or change your timeframe and profit aspirations of study and start over. But then again you would be listening to me so pretty much if you can't do it yourself than you can't do it because the more people you listen too the more screwed you will be. Especially if you follow brainwashed aspects of Hershey.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top